City Mom, Country Mom
Between parents in Maine and those in Manhattan - let's just say I've noticed a difference in philosophies.
By Heidi Julavits, illustration by Dean Macadam
This summer - which, like all our summers, my family and I spent in rural, coastal Maine - a woman with a llama showed up (invited) to a neighbor's house. The llama, a nasty-tempered thing, mule-kicked a three-year-old in the chest, knocking her flat on her back. The parents, after calmly confirming their wailing child wasn't seriously hurt, grew cheerily circumspect. "Aw, it's good for her," said her father, brushing the incident aside.
"That," my husband remarked later, more flabbergasted than judgmental, "was amazing.
"That," my husband remarked later, more flabbergasted than judgmental, "was amazing.
